Editorial: Principle must triumph on school zoning

In-demand state secondary schools have made what might be described as a reconnaissance raid against the practice of zoning.

Much of their initial concern lies in persuading the Government to let them accept children of former pupils who live outside their zones.

There is a clear and emotive appeal in this. Families, through a history of attendance, form close connections with schools, as do schools with the families, and it is sad if access is denied.

It is also unnecessary, a fact that the likes of Auckland Grammar School and Mt Albert Grammar School should impress on the Government to broaden the focus from this exemption to a more thoroughgoing relaxation of zoning.

They should find a receptive audience. Zoning flies in the face of the National Party's preference for choice by obliging popular schools to declare a zone within which all residents have the right to send their children to the school.

Applications from outside the zone, such as those of the children of old boys, are drawn from a hat. This process means ambitious parents are deprived of the opportunity of sending their children to what they regard as the best-possible school.

They, and their offspring, suffer because the Labour Party, in the spirit of misguided egalitarianism, believes it is important to keep the same range of children in every school, rather than allow the brightest to stretch each other, as is the case in academies of excellence.

That policy has produced major distortions. Parents desperate to get their child enrolled in the school of their choice have found all sorts of ways to break into its designated zone. Some have moved temporarily into an area or rented a room there.

They were not prepared to concede that their children did not have the right to prosper through being schooled with others of similar talent. Auckland Grammar became, effectively, the preserve of parents who could afford the enhanced cost of real estate in its zone.

Clearly, matters are far from egalitarian when only the rich can select where their children can go to school. And that, ironically, may give the Government reason to pause over an extensive relaxation of zoning.

If it was abolished, those who could afford to live in the zones of the most in-demand schools would no longer have an automatic right to send their children to them. There would be complaints when they had to compete against bright and talented children from the likes of Otahuhu and Panmure.

The zones of the most in-demand schools are usually in areas held by National. This, therefore, represents something of a conflict between the party's principles and its electoral interests.

On all sorts of grounds, principle must triumph. There is not only the unsatisfactory exclusion of the out-of-zone children of old boys. There is also Auckland Grammar's stated wish for a roll that better represents Auckland's ethnic composition.

But, most fundamentally, the abolition of this needless regulation would lead to more schools emulating the standards set by those that attract most people.

Over time, this would be spurred by these schools having to meet the unsatisfied demand for the likes of the two Grammars if they are to maintain their rolls.

When zoning was ended by a previous National government, there was prolific movement around Auckland as parents placed their children in the best-available schools. There would be again if this Government had the courage to act in the best interests of public education.

When the case of the in-demand schools is considered, it must make children, and the parents who want to do their best to help them, its top priority.

If it responds to their wishes, zoning will go.